Have you noticed that your people get excited when a big opportunity shows up? Do you notice passion in your people as they are engaging prospects? Have you seen a salesperson modify a price, scope, or what they would normally do because they really want the deal?
If yes, then you are likely not closing the business that you should.
I would wager that:
- You have deals that you have lost even when you have lowered your price.
- Prospects have disappeared after saying things like, “We are only talking to you," or, “We want to work with you.”
- You have customers that you would love to fire, because they are not profitable, not people that you want to work with, or not customers that you would have taken if you were at 100% capacity.
Buying is an emotional process. Every decision that you have ever made in your life, you made based on emotions and then later justified the decision. When your people are selling and become emotionally involved in the sales process, they interfere with the buyer’s ability to become emotional.
Imagine if a sales person said to you:
- “We really want your business.” –Slight desperation
- “We need your business.” –Major desperation
- “I can do that for you.” –Willing to do anything for business
Is that really what you want to communicate to the prospect? How about these instead?
- “I’m not sure that we are a good fit for you. Let’s take some time to figure that out before we decide to take any major steps.”
- “I can’t really do that for you. It wouldn’t be fair to my current customers that paid full price.”
- “Can we talk through your timeline? I want to make sure that we can fit you into our schedule.”
Don’t those things sound more like a secure and confident salesperson who has other people’s interests instead of their own? That is someone most of us would like to buy from.
The problem is that your people cannot even come close to saying these things if they “want or need” the business. If you put pressure on them, if they need the money to survive, if they are short of quota, etc., your environment might be adding fuel to the fire.
To execute sales tactics properly, you cannot be worried about losing the business. It might make sense to examine how your people are selling to figure out if emotional involvement is holding them back.
